Welcome letter from PD
Choosing a sports medicine fellowship training program is no easy task. You will be aware there are over 150 programs nationwide, and though many of you will choose based on geography, there are still often many options within the same region. In the Northeast we certainly have such a circumstance, so it becomes my job to instruct you on how our Albany Medical Center program might differ from the others.
I will say that within the Northeast, the sports medicine fellowship programs work very well together. We share opportunities for our fellows, and I often host fellows from UConn, Maine, Boston and elsewhere when we cover the Ironman in Lake Placid. Our fellowships have collaborated extensively to develop online educational opportunities together for CAQ preparation, journal clubs, case presentations and didactics. And our fellows share experiences when they present cases together at the New England American College Sports Medicine regional meeting in the fall.
However, each program does have unique features. If you are interested in the educational opportunities on offer and mean to decide your training based on this metric, then keep reading.
We have been offering sports medicine fellowship training since 2010. Our program has a strong educational base and we have learners rotating with us from a host of primary care residency programs plus a vibrant sports medicine medical student interest group doing elective training. Our faculty are a mix of academic physicians and those in private practice, but all share a passion for teaching sports medicine.
Our patient mix is across the age spectrum. We see an equal mix of children and teenagers playing sports, young adults and older adults seeking to remain active. We have a wide referral base and see patients from a large area from urban, suburban and rural backgrounds. We see high school athletes, collegiate athletes, professional athletes and Olympian/Paralympians.
Our curriculum is very much office-based, with the predominant clinical experiences originating from seeing sports medicine referrals on a daily basis at one of two office sites. There is a dedicated sports-concussion clinic where you will learn state-of-the-art evaluation practices, including neuropsychology techniques, balance platform, treadmill testing and more. We teach musculoskeletal ultrasound practices from day one and have rich experience in its diagnostic and therapeutic advantages. We do lots of procedures, and our ‘typical’ fellow has performed 50-100 procedures on each of the common joints.
Game and event coverage are multifaceted. We cover NCAA Division One sports at Siena College and the University of Albany. We offer opportunities in medical tents at the Lake Placid Ironman and the Mohawk Hudson River Marathon. Our fellows attend ski mountain clinics in the Adirondacks & Catskills. There are many opportunities to cover high school sports. Each of our fellows have earned the chance to work with USA Rugby as a team physician, and preparing our fellows for a career caring for the highest demand sports at the elite level is our priority.
We have frequent research and writing opportunities. We expect our fellows to present cases at the national meetings. Our fellows graduate with all the tools to be successful sports medicine physicians.
If you want to learn more, please review the following webpages and consider interviewing with us.
Hamish A. Kerr, MD, MSc, FAAP, FACSM, CAQSM
Sports Medicine Fellowship Director,
Professor of Medicine, Albany Medical Center
